As 2025 draws to a close, a highlight is that the United States has undertaken its largest troop mobilisation in the Caribbean in decades. Its Navy has deployed its most advanced aircraft carrier, along with fighter jets, amphibious vessels, attack submarines and tens of thousands of troops, as it intensifies its pressure on Venezuela in an effort to force President Nicolás Maduro from power.

The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS), released in early December 2025, identifies Latin America and the Caribbean as a strategic priority. Reviving the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, the document asserts that the U.S. must deny influence or control by outside powers (read China) in Latin America and ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains under American political, economic and military influence.

The push to reinforce American primacy in Latin America coincides with U.S. President Donald Trump’s waning interest in Europe, another long-standing U.S. sphere of influence. Since the end of the Second World War, the U.S. has served as Europe’s primary security guarantor. If Washington kept western Europe together through a tightly knit alliance during the Cold War, it expanded this security umbrella to eastern Europe after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, creating a large transatlantic bloc. Under Mr. Trump, however, the U.S. is no longer interested in shouldering the burden of European security — a position explicitly articulated in the NSS. Why is America, at a moment when Russia and China are seeking to overturn the U.S.-built and U.S.-led security and economic order, stepping back from Europe while moving to consolidate its influence in the Western Hemisphere?

It is difficult to discern a cohesive doctrine in Mr. Trump’s foreign policy, marked by the President’s impulses and unpredictability. Yet, even these impulses, this unpredictability and his ideological orientation rooted in Christian nationalism and America’s might cannot ignore the structural shifts reshaping the international order. Mr. Trump is not the ‘President of peace’ that he claims to be — he has already bombed six countries, even if he has stopped short of a full-scale war.

At the same time, Mr. Trump, despite his rhetoric about American military and economic dominance, recognises that he no longer lives in a unipolar world. His reluctant aggression and strategic recalibration are reflections of the changes now taking shape in the global balance of power.

Three great powers

When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, a new order emerged with the U.S. at its centre. There was no other great power positioned to challenge American primacy. The unipolar moment, however, has since passed. While future historians may better identify the precise point of rupture, one such moment was Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. The ensuing conflict in eastern Ukraine, the tepid western response, and Russia’s ability to endure despite sanctions reinforced the limits of the ‘rules-based order’.

The end of unipolarity, however, does not mean the end of American dominance. The U.S. remains, and will remain, for the foreseeable future, the world’s pre-eminent military and economic power. What has changed is that Washington is no longer the sole great power shaping geopolitical outcomes. China and Russia now occupy that space as well, deepening what Realist thinkers describe as the inherently anarchic nature of the international system.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was America’s principal rival, and in the 1970s, Washington reached out to China to exploit fissures within the communist bloc. Today, the U.S. identifies China as its principal and systemic challenger. This, in turn, leaves open the possibility of a reset in ties with Russia — an idea embraced by Mr. Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) ideologues, who frame Russia as part of a shared ‘Christian civilisation’.

The reigning power versus the rising power

The U.S. faces a unique challenge in China. The Soviet economy, in its prime in the early 1970s, reached about 57% of the U.S. GDP, before it began slowing down. China’s economy, now the world’s second largest, already amounts to about 66% of the U.S. economy. China continues to grow at a faster pace, steadily narrowing the gap.

As China’s economic power expands, it is being converted into military capability (it has already built the world’s largest Navy, by number of ships). Like other great powers, Beijing is seeking to establish regional hegemony and global dominance. So, a prolonged contest between the U.S., the reigning power, and China, the rising power, appears unavoidable. The situation is comparable to 19th century Europe, when a rising imperial Germany threatened to upstage Britain during Pax Britannica, unsettling the ‘Concert of Europe’.

Russia is the weakest link among the three powers. It is a relatively smaller economy with a shrinking sphere of influence. But Russia’s nuclear arsenals, expansive geography, abundant energy and mineral resources and its demonstrated willingness to use force to achieve its strategic objectives keep it in the great power constellation. From Moscow’s perspective, the country drifted into the wilderness in the 1990s before announcing its return in 2008 with the war in Georgia. Since then, it has sought to rewrite the post-Soviet security architecture in Europe. As the West, having expanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into the Russian sphere of influence, responded to Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine with sweeping sanctions on Russia and military support for Kyiv, Moscow moved ever closer to China. Russia and China have found common ground in opposing the western ‘rules-based order’ — Russia thinks that the order denies it its rightful place in the world and seeks to revise it accordingly, while China, by contrast, as Rush Doshi argues in The Long Game, wants to replace it with a China-centric order.

Fluid multipolarity

All three great powers today understand that the world is no longer organised around a single centre of authority. In that sense, the world is already multipolar. But unlike the post-Second World War and post-Cold War transitions, the structures of the new order have yet to fully emerge. During the Cold War, the world was divided into two ideological blocs and two largely separate economic systems. Today, China lacks the kind of satellite state networks that characterised the 20th century superpowers, while the U.S. is reassessing the sustainability of its alliance frameworks, including its commitment to Europe.

Russia, with its own great power ambitions, is wary of being seen as a Chinese ally irrespective of its close strategic partnership with Beijing. This opens a window for a Washington-Moscow reset. But the war in Ukraine remains a stumbling block. Russia may not want to challenge America’s global leadership, but it certainly wants to re-establish its primacy in its sphere of influence.

Thus, there are three great powers with divergent interests that are pulling the global order in different directions, rendering the emerging multipolarity fluid rather than as a structured system akin to the post-Second World War order. This also means that middle powers, including superpower allies such as Japan and Germany, and autonomous actors such as India and Brazil, would continue to hedge their bets.

Mr. Trump wants Europe to shoulder greater responsibility for its own security, reset relations with Russia and reassert American primacy in its immediate neighbourhood even as Washington prepares for a prolonged great power competition with China. The idea is to return to the classic offshore balancing. Even if Mr. Trump fails in executing it, future American Presidents may not be able to ignore the shifts that he has initiated. Russia, for its part, seeks to carve out a sphere of influence. China aims to preserve its close strategic partnership with Russia to keep the Eurasian landmass within its orbit, while establishing regional hegemony in East and Southeast Asia — moves that would cement its status as a long-term superpower, much as the U.S. did by asserting its hegemony in the Western Hemisphere in the 19th century, and across the Atlantic in the 20th century. In this fluid landscape, Russia has emerged as the new ‘swing great power’ between the two superpowers, paradoxically lending the emerging multipolar order a distinctly bipolar character.

Published – December 31, 2025 12:16 am IST

Donald Trump’s first term gave the world a taste of deliberately disruptive unwanted involvement in the domestic affairs of other countries, with examples ranging from Britain in the throes of Brexit to North Korea where the 45th US president attempted to forge a personal deal with Kim Jung-Un.

US tech billionaire Elon Musk, however, has taken this to a whole new level. Musk appears willing to intrude in other nations’ affairs by using his personal influence with specific decision-makers, governments and institutions, or by attacking them from the sidelines of social media in order to remake them in the way he wants them to be. In contrast, Trump is more pragmatic and could do a deal with any nation provided they fall in line with his “America first” mission, and give him what he demands.

In the past six months, many countries have been subjected to Musk’s “personal foreign policy” initiatives. Until fairly recently, there were two schools of thought on his interest in global politics. Initially, Musk was merely “a mischievous antagonist” who simply loved to shock and appeared largely driven by social media.

But that has given way to nervousness in the face of Musk’s increasingly deliberate attempts at destabilising governments, including his persistent stoking of populist support for far-right parties, and potentially funding populist allies. This comes as current president Joe Biden warns of the growing power of the ultra wealthy in his final address to the nation before he steps down.

Musk wields enormous global influence not merely because of his wealth, connections, and fleet of companies. But arguably because he is a self-proclaimed populist, with increasingly far-right political preferences. As of January 20, he will also be a significant member of the Trump administration.

His political toolbox includes supporting or (more usually) strafing individual politicians (for instance UK prime minister Keir Starmer, or German chancellor Olaf Scholz ). He also backs populist parties such as Reform UK and AfD in Germany. He criticises government officials in other countries, judges and broadcasting outlets in places where he doesn’t live.

Musk’s political involvement appears to be largely aimed at giving succour to populist individuals, parties and causes, as well as actively hollowing out centrist parties in other countries. Musk’s political intrusion, however, has expanded of late, with an apparent eye on election results.

Examples include countries with elections some way off (Canada by attacking prime minister Justin Trudeau), or much sooner (Germany), giving him scope to criticise the incumbents while backing his chosen opposition party.

Musk’s attention is extensive, from attacks on Starmer, to support for Italy’s Georgia Meloni and Argentina’s Javier Milei.

WHOSE FOREIGN POLICY?

The worry for those working in foreign policy is that Musk has proven effective in the role of Trump’s pre-inauguration disruptor of choice, and may well be deployed in the name of the US government to continue his interference and destabilisation. The challenge will then be discerning where Musk’s personalised foreign policy ends, and where precisely US foreign policy begins.

Musk positions himself as the global defender of free speech , in order to soften the ground for Trump’s preferred combination of far-right populism and protectionist, tariff-driven trade approaches.

Musk’s way of working is to encourage national communities and leaders to “rally against rules”, thereby empowering far-right parties, and industry leaders who have spotted an opportunity to deregulate key sectors.

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg recently announced an enormous transformation of the social media giant’s content moderation policy in the US. The European Parliament’s far right grouping Patriots for Europe supported Musk’s call for greater media freedom.

Both of these conveniently aligned with Musk’s targeting of the EU and EU regulation as “institutionalised censorship”, paving the way for Trump himself to kickstart any number of quarrels.

The buffer zones of common sense, including former UK deputy PM Nick Clegg as (the now former) head of policy for Meta, have been dispensed with. Zuckerberg’s thinking now echoes that of companies, regulators and politicians who agree with Trump.

DISRUPTIVE AND DIVISIVE

Musk represents both indirect and direct state interference as a solo global disruptor and as Trump’s preferred front man. Sitting at Trump’s right hand and – as of January 20 – heading the new US Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) – means it is unclear who is acting, and in whose interests and crucially, who benefits.

Are countries less likely to tell Musk and Trump to back off, aware of the risk of a deluge of ire with very real consequences in terms of trade spats? This is certainly the approach of many, including Marietje Schaake, former European parliamentarian, arguing that: “Musk must be seen as representing the US president when he bets against the leadership of key European nations, allies until now.”

Or are countries just as likely to disregard Musk, betting that the ramped up performative bullying inherited from Trump can be largely ignored?

RESPONDING TO INTERFERENCE

While many may push back, only a few have the ability to make a difference in global politics, and the EU is one such example. The European Commission made clear that it closely watched Musk’s recent X livestream session with Alice Weidel, leader of German’s far right party AfD. This was in order to decide whether X itself provides (in this case) the AfD with an unfair public advantage – largely through the manipulation of algorithms designed to swamp competing non-AfD voices ahead of February’s German election.

The European Commission – in its role as enforcer of Europe’s Digital Services Act (DSA) – could impose high fines, or blocks. But it will need serious political will to do so, as well as incontrovertible evidence to prove that X is causing risk to the public by augmenting unlawful hate speech.

What are the consequences of Musk’s rollercoaster ride into global affairs? Deregulation is likely to be the order of the day. Maga has long pushed for a “small state/big companies” approach and this is likely to continue under Musk’s leadership of Doge.

There could also be problems ahead for those who don’t understand Musk’s role. Casualties here could include prospective secretary of state Marco Rubio along with US foreign policy officials in Washington (and their counterparts around the world), all of whom may be confused by whose agenda is being carried out.

But a slew of angry international allies is a poor start for any new government. Violating the “norms of responsible conduct” – however flippantly Musk regards them – will not ultimately assist in Trump himself being effective, but rather just more disruptive.

(Author: Amelia Hadfield, Head of Department of Politics, University of Surrey)

(Disclosure Statement: Amelia Hadfield has received Jean Monnet /Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe funding from the European Commission)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)